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Monday, May 15, 2017

The Blue House, Random Harvest spaces for lease in downtown Bethesda

The ground floor spaces in the Woodmont Crescent building that are currently home to The Blue House and Random Harvest are available for lease. Streetsense is the real estate firm marketing the two spaces, which are right next to Starbucks at the corner of Norfolk and Woodmont Avenues in downtown Bethesda.

There's a huge opportunity there to ultimately do a public-private deal like Lot 31, if the Woodmont Crescent building lot could be assembled with the Montgomery County garage next door, for a major development right near the Metro station. The site is literally surrounded by high-rises already, and an underground garage could provide parking for both the public and Marriott (by which time it should be known exactly how many spaces Marriott will need).

90 comments:

Or maybe the landlord is just looking for two new tenants. In the absence of Starbucks and Black's, that site is too small to be viable, and the County has already promised the parking lot to Marriott.

If Black's owns their building, it's no different than Tastee and Woodmont Grill. Their building is worth only a fraction by itself of what it would be worth assembling the adjoining properties.

The Marriott parking would easily be replaced in a large garage under the new development. Once the leases are up in the Woodmont Crescent building, this is going to happen at some point, let's not kid ourselves. Not exactly an architectural gem, folks.

I still don't see the Marriott parking as a done deal, anyway. It's going to hurt nearby businesses. Anybody who thinks the average person wants to park on Auburn Avenue, wait for a bus, and do that all over again just to patronize a business near Marriott is nuts.

The County should force Marriott to provide the parking on their massive site.

9:12: None of those are convenient. At all. Think like a consumer, not a Councilman. "Well, I declare...just have those bums park at the edge of town, and wait for a bus." Good god. This is what happens when you have a county run by imbeciles who don't know how business works.

does anyone know of any other bethesda news sites that are a little more professional with their reporting? I imagine this blog is only going to go further downhill once we get closer to election season and Dyer inevitably loses when he runs for council....

unfortunately the only other bethesda news site seems to be Bethesda Beat. WashPo seems a bit more focused on NoVa although when they do get up to Bethesda the content is generally good and well thought out. I think they just had a good article last week on Bethesda's growth and clash of old and new.

Biz closes in bethesda "Blame the Council!!!!! MORIBUND! "Biz opens in Bethesda "Biz miraculously overcomes Hans nighttime economy and survives. I'm sure the council will destroy it any min now"

The guy just loves to find any and every way to blame things on the County council like all they do is sit and scheme. I'm sure none of them are even aware of Dyer much less consider him a contender in November.

It always amazes me that people forget about the tens of thousands of houses in the neighborhoods around Bethesda. I'm not taking the bus to dinner, and I'm not walking five blocks in the rain. All this deal does is put more money into valet parking companies and marriotts pockets, and makes me go to rockville for dinner.

Actually, Dyer is deleting comments. As someone who has watched my comments become erased within 5 minutes of posting, I can say it is there one minute and gone the next. It won't even be offensive either, he will just delete it because it agrees with someone who is winning in an argument with him. It is hard to find evidence of him doing this as they only occasionally say "This post was removed by the blog administrator". I understand why he removes offensive posts, but if you don't believe me, leave a link in the comments sometime supporting a view point different than his and *poof* it will disappear.

6:49 AM I'm not voting for incumbent councilmembers because of their insane development policies (i.e. Westbard), not listening to residents and for endangering citizens (911 not working, lack of school safety, sanctuary policies, etc.)

You're saying you wouldn't vote for Dyer because he deleted your comment.

"will not take any internal criticism, no matter how politely it is given. He does not want advice, cannot be corrected, and is too insecure to see any constructive feedback as anything other than an attack."

8:40 AM You might want to actually meet Dyer and actually get to know the person before making broad generalizations because he deleted some dumb comment. There are plenty of forums to get to know candidates during election season.

Love your blog! I walked in to Blue House and expressed my saddness but was told it was only the upstairs space that was for lease. I checked streetsense and that appears to be true. Robert do you know someone on the inside of Streetsense who knows these local businesses are being forced out?

Where do you get your information? Or did you write this as a "story" outlining all the options that could happen on this property - creating a rumor mill to rouse up your readers? As the readers should understand what they are reading is your opinion but not based on facts.

All this supposed evidence Dyer has been collecting against readers/trolls, county council members, etc., why doesn't he actually submit them to law enforcement if he believes his points to be true and correct?

7:34: Because they are useless until I have an ISP or real name and address to forward to police and the FBI.

2:40: There is no "Anna Van Horn" in Bethesda on Facebook or Google. Fake name being used by our resident troll.

Everyone can see that we're dealing with a paid troll here. It's literally all day and all night. Posting and posting. Only someone being paid, or a raving lunatic, would have the time to post this many troll comments on one website, day after day.

Each threat or instance of harrassment/stalking carries a two-year sentence in federal prison, so I hope you're getting paid a lot for your "work."

ISPs? You state this twice. Getting the ISP is easy, as long as you have the IP address. (A WHOIS on the IP address would give you the ISP.)

You are technically illiterate, and demonstrate this repeatedly. This one off the things that scares me about your future candidacy for the Council. You need to modify the template code you use to fix the timestamp on this blog; something you are incapable of doing. You can record IP addresses in a Blogger supported Blog, if you just paste in some javascript.

Your criticism of the 911 outage was not only rife with factual errors, but for technical reasons illiterate. Your taken offense at the delay in replacement of non-internet-connected workstations running Windows 2000 is incredibly stupid.

As someone with computer expertise, the notion of you on the County Council trying to influence matters is horrifying.

What's really strange about the timestamp issue, is that both of Robert Dyer's other blogs show the correct time in their timestamps.

The funny thing about Dyer's blog is that many of the features that kept his blog from being considered a "news site" are only on the web version, not on the mobile version - e.g. complete photo galleries of all articles showing on the home page. I don't know why Dyer doesn't update the web version to correct this.

Also, comments on the mobile version are threaded whereas they are not on the web version. Which makes conversations even more disjointed than they already are.

To be fair to Robert, modifying the timestamp on the template used by him -- Awesome Inc. theme -- is a little harder than some other templates where you can do this by setting the timezone in the Blogger Admin dashboard. But for anyone with the extensive experience claimed by Robert in IT matters, it should have been a trivial task to do.

To be frank with Robert, you could record IPs fairly easily, by using several visitor counter applications (not all, but some.) This is one of the ways in which the attribute "unique" is given to a visitor site visit by some internet site analytics.

But the simple fact of the matter is that Robert is a classic bully -- threatening "body slams" and nose punches while these written threats attempt to hide the fact that he is the least imposing male of nearly all-time that could make you fear physical harm.

This male is in his late 40s, and the frequent use of the supposed insult "impotent" by this childless fellow is revealing. As is,in the last 12 months, the new insult that a critic is a "dumpster-diving hobo".

12:12: For a computer "expert," you are wrong on every point. You can't get ISPs because you can't capture IP addresses either on the Blogger platform. I don't have to change anything on the template to change the time zone, all I have to do is check a box off to change it to Eastern Time if I want.

My criticism of the 911 outage that killed 2 county residents was on-point, and verified by the official autopsies of the disaster.

The County government was not merely using "non-connected workstations" - the government was running on Windows 2000 in 2014. If they were non-connected, the councilmembers wouldn't have been whining about the platform not being compatible with their smartphones. If you are a computer genius, I assume you know that a computer cannot contact Roger Berliner's smartphone without being connected to the internet.

I understand that folks who are part of the criminal activity going on in the county indeed would find it "horrifying" if were on the Council, as it would lead to several perp walks outside of 100 Maryland Avenue.

1:56: I'm not in my "late 40s," dumbass.

3:52: I can absolutely track the number of visitors to my blog, which has the highest number of Bethesda-based readers of any local site.

"For a computer "expert," you are wrong on every point. You can't get ISPs because you can't capture IP addresses either on the Blogger platform."

HaHsHaHaHa -- Google is your friend. You most certainly can. Way, way back in the dark ages you were expected to rush and check the cache of a visitor counter. No longer true. Javascript to the rescue, as well as depositories to hold the IPs recorded.

"I don't have to change anything on the template to change the time zone, all I have to do is check a box off to change it to Eastern Time if I want."

That would not change the timestamps on Comments. For that you would have to modify the template code. Good luck, but lying about this whole issue is your modus operandi.

As for the 911-issue, your representation of this as a misfeasance by the County Council is a claim not only irresponsible only your part, but as a technical analysis utter BS.

5:25: Are you denying that the County Council has oversight authority over the 911 system? That would indeed be "utter BS." As a result of their failure, two of their constituents died. Another 7 died in the Flower Branch explosion. A tenth constituent, only 15 years old, was murdered by MS-13 gang members the Council allows to reside in the County. The death toll is rising by the month. We need a new Council - FAST!

12:28: If I were elected, they'll have to actually write about me, which includes quoting what I say at a Council meeting.

2:28: You mean compared to the current Council, whose members berate female County employees and former County Councilwomen during televised meetings? Please.

4:40: You already posted this before. They're not going anywhere until somebody leases their spaces. Both are shown for lease on the Streetsense website.

5:33: I'm regularly shown in photographs and on video. My age and appearance are not a secret, unlike you, who are hiding behind a computer screen with a fake name. For someone who claims not to be the troll, you seem to share his long-standing and weird interest in my age.

9:27: If you think 44, 45 or 46 count as "late 40s," you would fail a grade school math exam. A fake person, with a fake name talking about a "birth certificate." It reads "Born: 2017. Location: MoCo political cartel smoke-filled back room."